The Dead Read online

  I wouldn’t exactly say I saw sex in their eyes, like I’d recently come to recognize, but there was a hint of that and something else I was very familiar with. Violence. I didn’t need them to give me the specifics to get the general sense of bad shit heading my way.

  I stood and wiped the sand off my butt, my hands stopping close to my knives and staying there.

  “Jacob is expecting a report from me when I get back, so let’s hurry it up,” I said as I took a step toward the boat I’d arrived in.

  “She thinks she can order us about,” one of them said, and the other three laughed. It wasn’t even a good joke. Yep, this was about to get ugly.

  They edged in closer, two of them moving around me to block in my sides as one approached head-on with a man at his back.

  I felt myself tense and wondered if they noticed it. It wasn’t because of what they would do to me. They wouldn’t hurt me. I’d killed groups of Dark Walkers, so four men posed no threat. But I might kill them—and I couldn’t, no matter how much they provoked me, because I needed Jacob, and killing his pirates after a couple of days on the job might look bad.

  “Guys, this is a very bad idea.”

  What a shock. They continued anyway. A strange hand was groping my butt, as one of the men on the side got impatient.

  “I know I might not look like much, but you don’t know what you’re dealing with, so I’d remove that hand.”

  I’d been concerned things might come to this, and not because I was that in tune. They’d basically said as much every time Jacob wasn’t around. I just thought it had been a bluff, them fluffing up their pirate colors and acting the part.

  “If you don’t take your hand off me I might have to turn you into a walking cliché, hook and all.”

  There was a grunt, or maybe that was a laugh. “What’s a little thing like you going to do?”

  I could see from the smiles that no one thought I could back up my words. Still, I gave them one more chance.

  “You’ve got about three seconds before I remove the hand.” And hopefully he’d take me up on that extended timeframe, because I had a silly feeling that Jacob wouldn’t appreciate me carving his pirates into pieces.

  Instead of removing it, he actually squeezed. I’d let this go way too far. I should’ve put them in their place after the first insinuation. Now I might have to chop off pieces. Maybe not the whole hand, though. That seemed like a strong warning. Perhaps just the pinky? How angry could Jacob be over a pinky? After all, it was a nearly worthless little digit. Then again, maybe taking a pinky might be more upsetting than I thought.

  My fingers grazed the knife at my hip and I set my mental aim then spun into action. The offending hand was quickly removed, although still attached to the offender, who was now at my feet. I had my right foot on his chest. I held one hand out and dug my knife partially into the flesh above his wrist.

  I made sure it was the perfect spot, a place that wouldn’t do irreparable damage. I wasn’t looking to be trapped on a boat with someone wielding a hook. The grudge might happen anyway just from the embarrassment of being bested by a small female, but I’d limit the damage.

  I watched as everyone else took a step backward. And then another one.

  “Next time your hand touches me, you lose it. Is that clear enough?”

  I waited until he nodded before I took my foot off his chest and released his arm.

  “Great. Now my knife is all dirty.” I found the nearest tree and scraped the blood off the best I could.

  “How’d you do that to Murrell?” Stinky asked.

  I tucked my knife back into the hook I used to hold it at my hip while they all looked on. “I never miss my mark.” I took a step toward the boat. “I’m ready to leave now.”

  There were looks shooting this way and that between them before Murrell, who was still bleeding, finally said, “You ain’t gonna say nothing to Jacob about this, are yuh?”

  “Not if you get me back quickly. If I don’t get a good sleep, I get real cranky, so I’d double-time it with the rowing.”

  Finally I saw a little urgency in their steps.

  I was a few feet from the boat when I heard a familiar chiming. A quick glance around told me I was the only one hearing it.

  I shook my head and continued over to the boat that would take us back to the ship, but the chimes got louder.

  “I’m not talking to you. You tried to kill me. Go talk to someone else,” I said, not caring what my companions thought. They’d probably been ready to tell Jacob I’d fallen overboard and been eaten by a shark. Did I really care if they thought I was nuts?

  The pirates looked at me like I was the craziest bitch around but didn’t ask who I was speaking to. Good. I leaned back on the seat I occupied alone.

  It wasn’t very surprising how the night had gone down. Humans had pecking orders, same as a pack of wolves did. I’d just shown them where I fit in.

  I was an alpha and they better not forget it. There was only one person alive who I considered my equal, and he wasn’t here at the moment. Good luck, boys. There’s a new bitch in town.

  15

  Three weeks later

  Jacob’s door looked solid, but I knew a good kick would bust it right open. Instead I rapped my knuckles against the surface, ignoring the more violent inclinations. I’d been on this boat for three weeks. I hadn’t made contact with the Skinners but I’d vetted six of Jacob’s ships already, with word the schedule was going to pick up. Which also had me wondering how many ships there were.

  This was a much larger organization than I’d realized. It was another thing that kept me in line, and not because I personally cared about my own welfare. The larger the network, the more use I could put it to. Considering the ships I’d already vetted and the time I’d agreed to stay on, this bastard had a fleet of at least a hundred. Once I got my hands on that cure, that would be a hundred ships distributing it. So no matter what kind of sicko this guy was, we were going to be best friends for the foreseeable future.

  “Come in,” Jacob said without asking who it was. I guessed it was nice when you were surrounded by people who all licked your boots, and his crew did—and they didn’t even see the sick shit in his head like I had. Would love to know what other little good deeds he did on a daily basis to encourage the ass-kissing I saw from a crew like this.

  I walked in, doing a mental wipe of all the concerns I had so that I could plaster a mask of calm tranquility on. I took the seat on the other side of his desk without waiting for an invitation and leaned forward, eyeing up his breakfast plate that made the eggs I’d just eaten look like they’d come from an anorexic chicken. My sea of tranquility might have caught a couple of waves if I’d seen bacon, too. Either way, I settled the score by leaning forward and plucking a biscuit from where it rested on the corner of his dish.

  He didn’t say anything about it. That was the beauty of leverage at work. I had to play nice, but so did he.

  “Are you helping me or not?” I asked.

  “You really aren’t very good at diplomacy. I can see how you and Dax got along.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?” I snapped. I didn’t need his opinion on my compatibility with someone I was trying to not think about every damn minute of the day.

  “I told you I would, and I am. I honor my word.”

  “I think you’re jerking my chain,” I said, having recently learned that new saying from one of the books I’d lifted from Jacob’s booty. This man got everything: clothing, booze, you name it.

  His chin tilted up. “What does jerking my chain mean?”

  I thought back to the passage in the book I’d read it from. There hadn’t actually been a chain anywhere in the scene, but the meaning had been fairly clear. “Screwing with me.”

  He pursed his lips and tapped a single finger to them. “But what’s that got to do with a chain?”

  “It’s too long to explain.” I hoped he left it at that before I had to get creative. I’d had no
idea either when I read it.

  “I could say the same for you, pulling the chain link. You’ve only found one Dark Walker in my crew so far.”

  “First off, it’s ‘jerking my chain.’ If you’re going to steal my sayings, please get them right.”

  Jacob shrugged in a hesitant agreement. I thought back to when I’d first shown up and hoped I wasn’t going to end up thrown overboard with my neck slit. Even two weeks ago, I would’ve gotten a squinty look. Now he nodded, no pretense, no show.

  Were we best buds? Not in this lifetime. Someone who could kill a person they were mated with would never make it to my inner circle. But we weren’t two armadillos going at it either. And when we were alone like this, we’d come to a sort of truce. I didn’t shit all over him in front of his crew, and he cut me more slack than anyone else, knowing I hadn’t signed up to be one of his pirates and he needed me almost as much as I needed him.

  There had even been that night a week ago when he’d tried to take our relationship a little further. He’d hit the whiskey pretty hard from the smell of it. I’d declined as politely as you could with someone like him. Luckily, he hadn’t seemed to care much. I thought I’d been more of a convenience than a desire, since there was nothing but men on board, and that didn’t seem to be where his inclinations lay.

  “Second, your crew has been clean. If I were the dishonest type, I would’ve thrown you a name just for your sake. There’s a couple names I’d love to give you right now. Is that what you’d prefer?” I’d been sorely tempted after a few of the encounters but hadn’t pulled the trigger. No matter what happened from here on out, no matter how desperate I might become, I had a code. Most people don’t plan on doing bad things. They just do. There’s always a rationalization, if you look hard enough, why it was for the best or it wasn’t their fault.

  Sometimes, my code was the only thing that kept me going when the ache I felt turned to an almost palpable pain. But I was trying to do the right thing, and I’d had to leave the Rock, or more specifically, I’d cut ties with people by doing so. People who I tried not to name or think about, no matter how often that damn man showed up in my head.

  That’s what’s good about a code. You can’t rationalize black and white. If I let go of my code, it might be a slippery slope until I found myself standing over someone I had loved, bloody knife in hand. I looked at Jacob and wondered if he’d had a code at some point. What had gone so wrong, and did I even want to know?

  “We getting this done or not?” I propped my chin on my hand, trying for a cross between bored and losing my patience. It was a tricky combo. Too much bored and they thought you didn’t care. Too much impatience and you looked like you cared too much.

  He put down his utensils and picked up a sheet of paper that was folded and sealed with wax. The seal crumbled and he glanced over the sheet before putting it aside. “They agreed to meet you at a trader hole in two days a bit west of here,” he said before he took another bite of eggs.

  “When did you get this?” I picked up the dismissed paper and read over the short message that only stated a time and place. There wasn’t any need to work on feigned annoyance anymore.

  He finished chewing his eggs before he spoke. It was sort of amazing how refined Jacob could seem on the outside when I knew what dwelled beneath. That’s the thing about monsters. You don’t always know who they are. I did, but there were a lot of suckers out there with no idea. Until I’d had that lapse when I couldn’t glimpse into a person’s memories, I’d never known how scary it could be, and I never wanted to be in the dark again.

  “I just got the message this morning. Sorry if I wanted to eat my breakfast before running to do your bidding.”

  I grabbed a link of sausage off his plate, just for making me wait like that, and relaxed back in the chair. They’d agreed to meet. Would they bring some of the cure? What if they didn’t?

  “Do you ever stop eating?”

  “I’ve got a lot of meals to make up for,” I said, and stood. I needed to think in silence. I grabbed his last biscuit before heading toward the door. “It took a little long, but good work, by the way.”

  “Of course, I’m only here to serve you,” he said as I shut the door, laughing to myself.

  16

  I swallowed the last bite of biscuit but knew this was going to be a two-meal morning. There was no way to think clearly on one plateful, so I detoured to the galley, wondering what was cooking for lunch already. I’d never missed Fudge’s food as much as I did now after three weeks of this crap.

  I poked my head over Marty’s shoulder as he stirred the contents of the large pot, and saw carrots and potatoes breaking the surface. He started edging his body slowly in between me and the stew like a mother protecting her baby from a predator as I tried to lean in closer to get a better whiff. Marty’s stew was hit or miss, and more often the latter.

  “Smells good.” Had to hedge my bets because bad stew was still better than no stew.

  He nodded, knowing my game by now. “They’ll be no stew until noon.”

  “Are you still pissed off I took that hand off you last night?” I’d wiped Marty out of a week’s pay at poker night, which was technically five nights a week, and I didn’t feel a lick bad about it. I knew the only reason the guys had invited me to the games in the first place was they thought I’d be easy pickings. Turned out I was a natural card player.

  “That was a lucky draw,” he said.

  “You are so right,” I agreed. Let them all keep thinking it, too, as I kept building up my emergency stash.

  Deciding on another tactic to get Marty to hand over some stew, I grabbed a seat on the bench in the corner.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I never sat in the galley, even when I was eating. It was way too cramped for my tastes, and the swinging pots hanging from the ceiling freaked me out even though I was a good two feet shy of hitting them. “What? A girl can’t sit and relax?”

  “You’re not getting any until lunch bell.”

  “Sure, Marty, whatever you say.” I kicked my feet up on the bench across from me and let it rip.

  “The girl from Malarky saw a little sharky and giggled all the way home,” I belted out. It didn’t matter that my singing voice would make mirrors crack. Marty hated that song no matter who sang it.

  “Don’t you keep—”

  “She came back the next day, after a roll in the hay—”

  “Stop! You win.” I watched as he grabbed a bowl and filled it generously.

  I stood, wondering why I’d ever thought pirates were so tough. “Thank you,” I said, smiling as I took my bowl and grabbed a spoon.

  A thump emanating from outside the boat rattled the stuff on the shelves above the stew pot, and I shot a glance over to see Marty’s reaction.

  “Who the hell you got coming on board this ship today?” I asked.

  He shrugged. I knew a couple more crew members were showing up. Jacob had given me a schedule, but whoever had just boarded sounded like a giant.

  I choked back the stew in three bites and headed above board. It was a lot easier to check out the newcomers before they scurried off about their day and I had to track them down, especially in the pit of the boat, where you never knew what you’d see.

  * * *

  The bright sunlight hit me and the sky was the brightest blue I’d seen in weeks, above water that was startlingly clear. The pirates called this place Panther Bay. No, wait—Panama Bay. Yesterday we’d sailed through the tiniest little river that they’d said had been dug out in the Glory Years, but now we were back on open water.

  The breeze was fresh on my skin and I’d come to appreciate the smell of salt air. It was one of those days that had to turn out well or it would be wasting its perfection.

  I leaned my head back, letting the sun beat down on my face as the wind lifted my hair off my shoulders. Being free like this would never get old, ever. Even living on the ship wasn’t as horrible as I’
d feared. I could get used to this life. Wide-open space as far as a body could swim, if a body could swim.

  Not that it was all perfect. There were gaps, or maybe, more accurately, gaping wound holes. I tried to ignore the aches, like the one when I thought of Bookie and another that I tried not to think of at all.

  It would go away. I was sure of it. Time was all. Everything faded with time; even the most stubborn of things faded out given enough distance and time. I’d just expected some more fading to happen by now.

  “Bookie, I did the right thing. Didn’t I?”

  Imaginary Bookie didn’t respond. He was fickle that way, but I still talked to him. Couldn’t seem to stop myself even though I knew he wasn’t there. No one was. Even though I was surrounded by pirates, I was on my own.

  I’d been on my own in a sense my whole life. When I walked away from the Rock, I’d essentially cut ties with Dax. I’d known exactly what I was doing, even in the emotional wreckage of Bookie.

  It was times like these I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that maybe I should’ve at least left Dax a note. Left him something. But everything I tried to write seemed inadequate, and I’d balled it up and tossed it.

  Logic told me it had been the right move. I couldn’t do what I needed to do with him around. I had to be free to make the moves I deemed necessary, and he’d said himself he didn’t think that looking for the cure was the right thing to do. I had to leave.

  When I left the Rock, I’d thought the gaping hole inside of me was mostly Bookie. I hadn’t realized what a large chunk had been Dax.

  It was strange that even now, as I thought of him, I could feel that strange, familiar buzz I used to get being close to him, like my body was trying to mimic him being there or something.

  “Glad to see you’ve been safe all this time.”